"Bondage...in the uncultivated savage is to his consciousness very small....What he struggles against is the bondage of physical nature, the lack of physical gratification...(his) mind being very little developed. The vast mass of humanity is very little removed from the animals. Not only so, but in many instances, the power of control in them is little higher than that of the lower animals." - Swami Vivekananda

Hong
Kong, Jan 15: Asia is home to the world`s freest and most
repressed economies, but Europe ranked highest as a region
in terms of economic freedom, an annual report released on
Tuesday by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal
said.

Hong
Kong and Singapore retained their no 1 and no rankings respectively
on the Annual Index of Economic Freedom for the 14th successive
year while India and China, two of the world`s largest economies,
were ranked quite low on the scale, coming in at 126 and 115
respectively.

European
countries accounted for half of the top 20 economies considered
free or mostly free, with Ireland at no 3, Switzerland at
no 9 and Britain at no 10. The US ranked no 5, and Canada
ranked 6th.

Moves
by newer members of the European Union to introduce straightforward
tax policies to attract more investment were having a radical
impact on the region as a whole, the authors said.

"What
we are seeing is a very strong commitment to economic freedom
in the new EU countries, and this is having a positive impact
on policies in the some of the older European countries such
as France," said Edwin Feulner, President of the Heritage
Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. "I think we
will continue to see this evolve over time and we expect to
see gradual improvement in economic freedom throughout Europe
as a whole."

The
index, which grades 157 economies on 10 economic factors,
including property rights, regulation of wages and prices
and trade barriers, shows "a very high correlation"
between a liberalized economy and a country`s prosperity,
Feulner said.

Several
other Asian nations also were near the bottom of the index,
including Vietnam (135th place), Laos (137), Bangladesh (149)
and Myanmar (153).